I am needing a prescription for the Pill. I can no longer use Student Health due to living in a new town and not being a student anymore. I am telling this to the kid as he is rolling out pizza dough and being handsome with long fingers and tanned hands.
The kid is saving his money for a big bike trip. He plans to traverse the state, from the Mississippi on the east to the Missouri on the west. He has a map he’s marking up when things are slow at the Dinner Bell. His family is being religious. They’re disapproving of the kid taking this trip on his own. They are thinking it is a bad idea, which it is. They are thinking it is dangerous, both physically and morally.
He’s ladling sauce on the dough in a slow, spiraling fashion. He’s listening without looking up, which I am appreciating. He says he knows a place on Franklin Street. I’m laughing at him knowing this. How can he be knowing this? He’s giving directions as he arranges the little pepperoni coins on the sauce.
One night after closing, I said to the kid, we should go sledding at the golf course. And I could tell he was being suspicious of this, it being two o’clock in the morning and probably twenty below, but he said yes anyway. There was the issue of not having sleds and the kid grabbed a couple of pizza pans. Of course!
The kid is always being a genius and he is always smiling and kind. One thing I know about people who are always smiling and kind is they’re the saddest fuckers of all.
My appointment is right after the lunch shift. I smell like garlic and olive oil and I’m still wearing my peasant blouse with the Dinner Bell logo and my polyester wrap-around skirt that never wrinkles. The clinic is in a brick house amongst fir trees and has a big front porch and pillars and rocking chairs and cats.
Inside, everyone’s just wearing jeans and tee shirts and sneakers. Everyone’s happy, saying hi there! There’s a candle that smells like English Leather and a poster on the wall asking What do you call a woman who doesn’t use birth control, with the answer being, “Mommy.”
I am led into a room that’s cozy like my grandma’s living room except it doesn’t smell like tapioca. There’s an easy chair with a footstool and wallpaper busy with daisies. But there’s also the exam table and the lamp and the tray with instruments as one would expect. Everything is on the up and up, except the doctor’s being unexpectedly young with kind eyes and short spiky hair.
I am wearing a crinkly paper gown and there’s a crinkly paper sheet draped across my lap and the doctor’s peering between my legs, telling me to scoot all the way forward and to relax, so I turn my head and read a poster about empowerment where there are three white teeth-ed woman laughing for some reason.
Student Health was where I got my first prescription for the Pill when I was living in the other town. I was having sex with my boyfriend, and my boyfriend’s friend, who was a grown man and a priest, was asking is she on the Pill and he was saying she should be on the Pill and he was telling us about Student Health. He was telling us getting a prescription there was easy. He was telling us about rights and confidentiality and we were feeling sophisticated.
The doctor is handing me a mirror like at the beauty salon when they spin you around to see what your hair looks like in the back. She is showing me how to tilt it so I can have a look at my vagina. I was never given a mirror at Student Health and I am not particularly wanting to look at my vagina, but I am feeling as though I have to.
Empowerment means you know how to have fun, but you take absolutely no shit. I am thinking of the kid and how he’s not empowered. I am making a mental note to say this to him in a non-confrontational fashion when I go back to work. The kid is not being religious like his parents, but he’s compliant, which is worse maybe.
The doctor is telling me you have some irregularities down there. She is asking me how often do you have sex and how many partners and I am saying just the one and not that often, both of which—if I’m being honest—are lies.
It turns out I have cancer and I am having to move back in with my parents. I am thinking this will all be behind me someday. I am practicing Stoicism.
And the kid, well he just flat out disappears. He never returns to the Dinner Bell, not even to collect his check, not even to say goodbye. Maybe he is still out there cycling. Maybe a truck knocked him right out of his toe clips and he’s lying in a cornfield somewhere. Maybe he pedaled all the way to California and changed his identity and now, he’s the happiest fucker of all.
The night at the golf course, I was drinking brandy I stole from the Dinner Bell, and I offered some to the kid, but he wouldn’t take any. And the moon was shining on his face and on the steep rolling hill and I was thinking this was a bad idea, which it was. Far below, the town was glowing, almost pretty. The kid tossed his pizza pan to the ground and took a running leap, splaying his arms and legs in an aerodynamically counterintuitive fashion. Still, he flew, whooping and laughing all the way down. I took another swig and watched his sad, dark form grow smaller and smaller.
